Here are 100 books that The Home Maker fans have personally recommended if you like
The Home Maker.
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Iâve loved reading novels about strong, quirky women since childhood (Nancy Drew, Ramona Quimby, Harriet the Spy, the heroines of Judy Blume novels, just for starting examples!). As I grew into writing my own stories, I also started studying womenâs history. I merged these two interests to begin writing historical novels with strong women protagonists. I love the challenge of researching to figure out the details of womenâs day-to-day livesâso many unrecorded stories!âand I love to advocate for the idea (fortunately not as revolutionary as it once was) that a woman can be the hero of her own story and that each womanâs story is important to tell.
I loved this book for being historical fiction at its finest, and I loved the main character, Mary Deerfield, for being a woman who did not fit within her own time.
Itâs 1660s Boston, and Mary is married to an abusive man. Determined not to die at his hand, she must fight against everything in her society to free herself from her marriage.
I loved how this book so insightfully explored the dynamics of an abusive relationship while also bringing to vivid life a distant time and place.Â
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER ⢠From the acclaimed author of The Flight Attendant: âHistorical fiction at its bestâŚ. The book is a thriller in structure, and a real page-turner, the ending both unexpected and satisfyingâ (Diana Gabaldon, bestselling author of the Outlander series, The Washington Post).
A young Puritan womanâfaithful, resourceful, but afraid of the demons that dog her soulâplots her escape from a violent marriage in this riveting and propulsive novel of historical suspense.
Boston, 1662. Mary Deerfield is twenty-four-years-old. Her skin is porcelain, her eyes delft blue, and in England she might have had many suitors. ButâŚ
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to runâŚ
I have always been fascinated by religion from an intellectual perspectiveâthe way it can be such a powerful force for both good and evil and is such a constant facet of humanity, regardless of the time or place. Iâm also interested in community and the complexity of human relationships, so itâs only natural that Iâm particularly excited about books set within religious communities. And, as much as I appreciate a true crime cult expose, I am a lover of great fiction first and foremost, so novels that explore religion with intelligence and artistry are my personal holy grail.
This immediately immersed me in another time and place. Apparently, Iâm very clear in my bookish likes, because it was recommended to me multiple times due to the combination of nuns and sapphic content. Luckily, it lived up to the recommendations!
It is very well written and extremely atmospheric, and it drew me right into its medieval world. Groff managed to create characters who feel appropriate to their era but who are also accessible to a modern reader, which is not an easy task. This helped me to become emotionally invested in the book.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS AN OBAMA'S BOOK OF THE YEAR
'Gorgeous, sensual, addictive' SARA COLLINS 'Brightly lit' NAOMI ALDERMAN
Born from a long line of female warriors and crusaders, yet too coarse for courtly life, Marie de France is cast from the royal court and sent to Angleterre to take up her new duty as the prioress of an impoverished abbey.
Lauren Groff's modern masterpiece is about the establishment of a female utopia.
'A propulsive, captivating read' BRIT BENNETT 'Fascinating, beguiling, vivid' MARIAN KEYES 'A dazzlingly clever tale' THE TIMES 'A thrillingly vivid,âŚ
As a teenager, I began to question the myths my parents told about our family, but when saying so caused trouble, I confided my stories to paper instead. Thatâs how I became a writer. My first love has always been fiction, but I broke into print writing historyâabout quirky subjects in which I find deep meaning, like the potatoâs revolutionary influence on the Western world, or how the invasion and occupation of Belgium in 1914 foretold Nazi Europe. My fascination with subversion shapes my novels tooâmy quiet, lonely protagonists would never storm the barricades yet appear radical because of how they live, a circumstance I know well.
I have a soft spot for characters who find strength by dint of superhuman effort, and the way this fifteen-year-old takes charge after the 1906 earthquakeâhaltingly, uncertainly, as is only plausibleâmakes me wish Iâd met her.
Her path is steeper than the San Francisco hills, yet her refusal to ask for pity wins me over. I also admire how Edgarian uses her protagonistâs coming of age to represent San Franciscoâs, a parallel delivered with a light touch.
But above all, the novel explores the fraught relation between women and power; and how Vera walks that tightrope makes compelling fiction.
New York Times bestselling author Carol Edgarian delivers âan all-encompassing and enthrallingâ (Oprah Daily) novel featuring an unforgettable heroine coming of age in the aftermath of catastrophe, and her quest for love and reinvention.
Meet Vera Johnson, fifteen-year-old illegitimate daughter of Rose, notorious proprietor of San Franciscoâs most legendary bordello. Vera has grown up straddling two worldsâthe madamâs alluring sphere, replete with tickets to the opera, surly henchmen, and scant morality, and the quiet domestic life of the family paid to raise her.
On the morning of the great quake, Veraâs worlds collide. As the city burns and looters vieâŚ
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother hadâŚ
As a teenager, I began to question the myths my parents told about our family, but when saying so caused trouble, I confided my stories to paper instead. Thatâs how I became a writer. My first love has always been fiction, but I broke into print writing historyâabout quirky subjects in which I find deep meaning, like the potatoâs revolutionary influence on the Western world, or how the invasion and occupation of Belgium in 1914 foretold Nazi Europe. My fascination with subversion shapes my novels tooâmy quiet, lonely protagonists would never storm the barricades yet appear radical because of how they live, a circumstance I know well.
I love stories about iconoclasts, and Joan of Arc fits that description, if anyone ever has.
The hard reality of this retelling draws me in: Joanâs a secular military leader who grew up toughened from her fatherâs blows rather than a pious young woman who hears voices. That skeptical take may offend some readers, but the history, politics, and personalities come vividly to life and seem real to me.
Chenâs seductive prose makes me wish I could write like her, and her novel lets me feel the tragedy and uplift of a great historical figure.
A stunning feminist reimagining of the life of Joan of Arc - perfect for fans of Cecily, Ariadne and Matrix
'It is as if the author has crept inside a statue and breathed a soul into it, re-creating Joan of Arc as a woman for our time' Hilary Mantel, twice Booker Prize-winning author of The Mirror & the Light
'A glorious, sweeping novel . . . Richly imagined, poignant and inspiring' Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne
'Chen earns the comparison [to Mantel] thanks to her vivid, visceral and boldly immediate storytelling . . . a hypnotic heroine for our time'âŚ
I come from an engineering background and early in my career I discover financial modelling as I had to assess the viability of business plans. I deal with financial models the last 20 years of my professional carrier as a Group Financial Officer of SIDMA STEEL SA. Moreover, I am teaching financial modelling in the American College of Greece, Deree, at University of Nicosia in collaboration with Globaltraing and many other places abroad. I am a numbers person, and I am fascinated by financial modelling as it provides you a tool to support effective decision-making.
Very good book covering the full investment process from the valuation of a business, to identifying a mispricing, to recognizing potential biases, and finally adding a business into a portfolio.
The concepts the book is dealing with, are derived from the Value Investing School at Columbia University where both the authors teach. The main raison d'ĂŞtre somebody would like to build a financial model is to use it to value an asset or a company.
I highly recommend it for the practical tips it provides on the valuation process.
Learn the overlooked skill that is essential to Wall Street success Pitch the Perfect Investment combines investment analysis with persuasion and sales to teach you the "soft skill" so crucial to success in the financial markets. Written by the leading authorities in investment pitching, this book shows you how to develop and exploit the essential, career-advancing skill of pitching value-creating ideas to win over clients and investors. You'll gain world-class insight into search strategy, data collection and research, securities analysis, and risk assessment and management to help you uncover the perfect opportunity; you'll then strengthen your critical thinking skills andâŚ
Iâm an Irish novelist and occasional screenwriter. My latest book, Duffy and Son, is my sixth. I can be drawn in by any well-told tale, of course, but Iâve always had the strongest reaction to stories with at least some element of comedy. I donât know, I just find books in which no one says anything funny to be deeply unrealistic. It infuriates me when any piece of fiction is viewed as âlesserâ because thereâs a chance it might make you smile. The books listed here will definitely make you smile. If you give them a chance, I hope you find them as worthy of your time as I did.
The Girlsâ Guide to Hunting and Fishing doesnât sound too promising in brief description.
Across seven distinct sectionsâshort stories, effectivelyâit follows one Jane Rosenal from puberty to maturity as she attempts to navigate the world of romantic love. What makes it soar is the quality of Melissa Bankâs writing. The prose here is as smooth as a pane of glass. You pick the thing up and next time you blink, youâre on page 50.
It helps that Jane herself is a wonderfully witty creation, sometimes to her cost. As a reader, I clutch this book to my heart, sighing and smiling. As a writer, it makes me want to give up.
The New York Times bestselling classic of a young womanâs journey in work, love, and life  âIn this swinging, funny, and tender study of contemporary relationships, Bank refutes once and for all the popular notions of neurotic thirtysomething women.â âEntertainment Weekly  âTruly poignant.â âTime  Generous-hearted and wickedly insightful, The Girlsâ Guide to Hunting and Fishing maps the progress of Jane Rosenal as she sets out on a personal and spirited expedition through the perilous terrain of sex, love, relationships, and the treacherous waters of the workplace. Soon Jane is swept off her feet by an older man and into aâŚ
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man sheâŚ
When writing fantasy and science fiction, I enjoy writing about strong female characters and strong female leads. I also like exploring fundamental questions such as what it means to be human. I grew up reading all the science fiction and fantasy I could get my hands on, and that vast landscape of stories has influenced my writing in many ways. I love to explore the limits of consciousness and darkness. I hope the books on this list inspire you and make you think. They have all influenced me in one way or another and made me a better writer.
Light on the Sound is a fascinating story and was a big inspiration for me. From the teenage, female protagonist who resists her oppression, to the fantastic creatures and imaginative ideas, this story has everything. Somtow writes with a vivid style that works well for the story, and he weaves everything together in unexpected ways. Â
The Inquestor Series was a classic science fiction series of the 1980s â and has now been reincarnated for the 21st century, with more adventures, more spectacle, and more extras. Tachyon bubbles, people bins and galactic empires â and profound family conflicts â Greek tragedy writ large.  Light on the Sound, the book that started it all, begins with one lonely planet and three lost souls, and ends with galactic revolution.
For twenty thousand years, the godlike Inquestors have held sway over the one million worlds of the Dispersal of Man.  S.P. Somtowâs limitless imagination has created a universe ofâŚ
I am a historian who just spent over a decade writing the biography of the civil rights activist and feminist activist, Mary Church Terrell. I wrote two other history books before I wrote Unceasing Militant, my first biography. I so enjoyed writing it that I plan on writing another, this time on a black woman named Mary Hamilton who was a leader in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in the 1960s. The authors I selected approached their biographies of black women with respect and critical compassion.
Benjaminâs Half in Shadow is an excellent exploration of the life of Nellie Y. McKay (1930-2006), a pioneering scholar of black womenâs literature. Fearing it could damage her career in the academy, McKay declined to be caricatured as an older, divorced, black single mother of two children. So, she hid this from all her academic colleagues and friends, including her closest ones. The driving force of Benjaminâs book is trying to make sense of the private life and professional motivations of McKayâs choice to live her life âhalf in shadow.â Benjamin suggests that black women in the academy face similar pressures to achieve in and conform to predominantly white spaces in ways that do not easily allow them to bring their entire selves into the light.
Nellie Y. McKay (1930-2006) was a pivotal figure in contemporary American letters. The author of several books, McKay is best known for coediting the canon-making Norton Anthology of African American Literature with Henry Louis Gates Jr., which helped secure a place for the scholarly study of Black writing that had been ignored by white academia. However, there is more to McKay's life and legacy than her literary scholarship. After her passing, new details about McKay's life emerged, surprising everyone who knew her. Why did McKay choose to hide so many details of her past? Shanna Greene Benjamin examines McKay's pathâŚ
I am a curious, passionate, and introspective woman. My values have led me to a quest to have a profound impact on the world and leave a legacy of healing. Each book on my list has profoundly impacted me and led me to challenge my values, rethink my priorities, heal my inner turmoil, and use my lived experience to help others lead a more meaningful life.
I found this book, which I read over fifty years ago, opening my eyes to the foundation of feminism. It taught me that all genders have both traditional female characteristics and male characteristics. Â
Having been raised to be the beautiful and dutiful wife, this book gave me the courage to exert my autonomy and appreciate that I held a voice of wisdom that couldnât be commandeered by another person.
In this quietly provocative book, Carolyn G. Heilbrun opens our eyes to the ways in which the concept of androgyny-the realization of man in woman and woman in man-has run, like a hidden river, from its source in pre-Hellenic myth through the literature of the Western world. The androgynous ideal shows itself to be a creative and civilizing force conducive to the survival of a truly human society.
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the worldâs most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the bookâŚ
After bumping around newspaper journalism in my 20s, I wandered into a Ph.D. and then landed a great job at the University of Texas at Austin. Being a professor allowed me to explore any subject that seemed interesting, which resulted in books on environmental collapse, sexism and pornography, racism, foreign policy and militarism, religion, journalism and mass media, and critical thinking. Throughout this work, radical feminism has remained at the core of my philosophy. Andrea Dworkin captures this politics in a line from her novel Ice and Fire, â'I am a feminist, not the fun kind.â Such feminism may not always be fun, but itâs always important.
Many women continue to embrace a radical feminist perspective, and one of the important feminist writers today is the UK journalist and organizer Julie Bindel. Her reporting on sex trafficking has been essential to understanding the worldwide exploitation of women and girls.
She published this book in 2021 to restate the liberatory goals of feminism and critique the impediments created not only by conservatives but also by liberals. Bindel pulls no punches and takes no prisonersâsheâs never afraid to confront the powerful and respond to her critics. One of the great experiences of the past year was being interviewed by Bindel for her podcast on men and feminism. Finally, Bindel reminds us that one of the biggest lies about feminists is that they have no sense of humor.Â
'[This book is] guaranteed to remind us what we have still to fight for. I can't think of a single person who wouldn't benefit from reading it' Observer
'Bindel is a rock star of second-wave feminism . . . an important, courageous book' The Times
'Bindel delivers a robust call to arms in every chapter . . . this book could not be timelier . . . As a young feminist who has finally seen the light, I consider it essential reading' The Critic
Feminism is a quest for the liberation of women fromâŚ
